Last Updated: Wednesday, 13 February 2008, 18:15 GMT  |
Nanowires allow 'power dressing' |
By Jonathan Fildes
Science and technology reporter, BBC News |
"Power dressing" may soon have a very different and literal meaning.Scientists in the US have developed novel brush-like fibres that generate electrical energy from movement.
Weaving them into a material could allow designers to create "smart" clothes which harness body movement to power portable electronic gadgets.
Writing in the journal Nature, the team say that the materials could also be used in tents or other structures to harness wind energy.
"Our goal is to make self-powered nanotechnology," Professor Zhong Lin Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology and one of the authors of the paper told BBC News.
"Airflows, vibrations - all these are mechanical energy that we can harvest to power devices."
Dr Dianne Jones, technical director of textile electronics firm Fibretronic, said that as the market for wearable electronics expands, technologies such as the nanofibres would become increasingly attractive
"It could perhaps be used to power tiny medical devices like a true cochlear implant or heart pacemaker, or a delivery mechanism for subcutaneous drug delivery implants or antibiotic drug reservoirs for preventing infection in retinal implants," she said.
The fibre has a piezoelectric effect," said Professor Wang. "This is an important effect that converts mechanical energy to electricity." Experiments with the prototypes showed that two 1cm-long fibres could generate a current of four nanoamperes and an output voltage of about four millivolts. "If we can optimise the design we can get up to 80 milliwatts per square metre of fabric - that could potentially power an iPod." |
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The ability to generate power for personal electronics using the clothing we wear would be a breakthrough in smart and interactive garments 
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